By Lavinia Plonka
Scarecrow “They took my arm and they threw it over there!
And then they took my legs and threw them over there!”
Tin Man “That’s you all over.”
My first vivid memory of forgetting was from age eight. My mother and I were at a discount outlet diving into bins of underwear like pirates into a treasure chest. “Mine, all mine.” I clutched all the new panties my chubby fingers could grab. Never again would I worry about being in a car accident and having the hospital staff cluck over my ragged briefs. I could move on to more weighty subjects like ending the Cold War or how I could con my father into more spare change so I could win the “Mission Money” collection contest and get a glimmer of approval from Sister Giovanni.
As we stood at the check out, my mother gave me a rare smile, clutching her lace trimmed slip with the adjustable straps. Then suddenly, she hissed, “Where is your pocketbook?” In the orgy of new lingerie, I had misplaced my first, my best, my only pocketbook, a red patent leather fantasy with a cool clasp that you turned. The blood drained from my face. I had $3.00 in that purse. My mother tore out of the line, dragging me back through disgruntled women who were busy burying themselves in discounted blouses. We tore the underwear bin apart. Looked through all the socks. Tears streaked my desperate face. This was it. I’d never have a pocketbook again. Let alone cash. A woman approached us, holding my purse. “Did you lose this, little girl?” she asked kindly. My mother thanked her profusely and turned to me. “What are we going to do with you? I swear you’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached!”
Since then, I have left my purse at parties, in shopping carts, in cabs and in restaurants. I rack my brain to try to retrace my steps, to remember where it may have gone astray. When finally I remember, it is a vivid experience, as if suddenly everything has come together. Like the Scarecrow, my parts were scattered, and now I’ve reconnected the neurons that keep my thoughts together, my head on my shoulders, my purse beside me.
A woman’s purse is like a limb, sometimes even forming a hollow in the shoulder from the years of hauling apparently unnecessary things. Then comes that moment when someone says, “Does anyone have a nail file, band-aid, lozenge, mint, hairbrush, tampon, aspirin, pen, the Yellow Pages, a map of the NYC Subway system, the original eight track of Helen Reddy’s, I Am Woman, the solution to the world energy crisis?” And you casually root around in your purse, muttering something like, “I think I have one in here somewhere,” producing the requested item to the delight and surprise of onlookers. Unfortunately, this magic does not work when you are looking through the same collection of items for your keys as the rain is pouring down, a strange man has followed you into the parking lot, and one of the bags is starting to tear.
When I have the opportunity to travel somewhere without my purse, there is inevitably a moment where I stop dead, trying to figure out what’s missing. What have I forgotten? And sometimes, I have my purse, but I’m so used to carrying it, that I forget it’s there. “Oh my god, I forgot my… oh, heh heh, here it is.” Men are no exception to this phenomenon. I’ve watched my husband Ron ransack the house looking for the glasses perched on his head.
Neuroscientists are always poking around in our heads trying to find our memories. Some speak about the functioning of the amygdala, a tiny little part of the brain that seems to store the unforgettable memories. I’ve hoped that I could delete some of my old memories so that there might be room on that little hard drive for remembering names of people I meet and recent conversations. Surely there is no reason to keep remembering the time I forgot about a concert engagement and got a call from the stage manager asking me where I was.
Muscle memory is bandied about as the reason certain habits don’t quit, like the limp that remains years after a sprained ankle. I once had a client whose ribs were held as tightly as armor. All attempts to introduce movement came to a dead end.
“It’s muscle memory,” she announced.
“Oh, were you injured there?” I asked.
“No, it’s from the corset.”
“Corset?”
“In my last life, I had to wear a corset. It was during the nineteenth century you see.”
I can’t remember where I put my keys, and she can remember her last life. Where is the fairness in this? Then again, I’d hate to imagine the state of her amygdala.
When I was a girl, I had no idea that my Mother, who had survived capture by the Nazis, had PTSD. Neither did she, since we’d never heard of it. I did not understand that certain triggers catapulted her brain’s hard drive into replaying scenes from the war. Whenever my father was even a minute late from work, no matter what the weather, she’d grab her purse and start walking the streets looking in the gutters for his dead body. When my Father came home minutes later, he would launch into violent cursing as he tore out of the house looking for her. One day, we hid her purse. She tore the house apart, then collapsed on the couch. Instantly, my seven-year-old sister, my two-year-old brother–who thought it was a marvelous game, and I jumped on her, pinning her to the couch. “Where is my pocketbook?” she wailed. “What have you done with my pocketbook?” By the time my father got home, five minutes later, we were all sobbing on the couch. To her dying day, she never went anywhere without her purse.
The worst is when I forget myself. It can happen at any moment. I’ll be driving and suddenly I’m at my office, when I was just going to the supermarket. Or I’m walking along a beach, so deeply in conversation with an imagined adversary that suddenly I say out loud, “I really don’t think so,” just as I pass an elderly man who looks at me pityingly. In those brief moments of awakening, I experience clarity, like the moment I remembered where I left my purse. Except in this case, it wasn’t my purse that got forgotten somewhere, it was me. My thoughts are scattered all over, and then whoosh! Everything comes back together, I am re-membered. I grope in my purse for my notebook to jot down this trope of enlightenment. My wallet is not in my purse. I forgot it on the kitchen counter.
Thank goodness that at the bottom of my pocketbook is at least $4.00 in change from the time I forgot to properly close my change purse. . .
Body language expert, Lavinioa Plonka has taught The Feldenkrais Method for over 25 years.
For more information, visit her at laviniaplonka.com